Why we do it...

	This page isn't to explain why we firefighters are firefighters or why we voluntarily fight fires, most of us do this for various reasons, ranging from wanting to perform a service to the community to enjoying it because of the excitement and rush of it all.
	Ever wonder why we did what you may have seen us do at an incident? Well, read on and we'll tell you why. We've placed the answers into 4 major areas: Structure Fires Motor Vehicle Accidents Woods / Grass Fires Other

Wear a mask and air tank: When an item catches fire, it produces gases that are often times harmful to the firefighters. Many synthetic, or man-made items, produce poisonous gases. The most common fires we go to as firefighters are vehicle fires and building fires. When Freon, (the coolant used in air conditioning units), burns, it becomes phosgene gas which is fatal if breathed. For this reason, we wear those air tanks and masks you see. The air mask is designed with technology called "positive pressure" for added safety. This means the air pressure INSIDE the mask is greater than the air pressure OUTSIDE the mask. If the mask gets bumped loose a little, it won't allow those harmful gases to enter the mask because it actually blows air out of the gap caused from bumping the mask. If the mask weren't positively pressurized, a bump on the mask would cause our "seal" to be broken and allow harmful gases to get into the mask where we would breathe them in. Our air tanks usually last from 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the amount of work you are doing. If you are working hard, you use more air. If you are working casually, you use less air.

Set a fan near a doorway of a smoke-filled building: If a home is filled with smoke from a fire, or natural gas from a pilot light going out, or whatever hazard may be present, we use a large and powerful fan called a "positive pressure ventilator," or PPV for short. What we do is place this fan about 10 feet from an open doorway and open a few windows on the opposite side of the house. The fan will force fresh outside air into the house and blow the bad air in the house out the other side. Hopefully, this will allow the occupants to re-enter the home quicker and safely. We've seen people burn kerosene stoves in their home during extreme cold weather but this fills the home with deadly Carbon Monoxide gas. We have to vent the CO2 out of the house to make it safe again for the occupants. For that reason, you should never burn anything like that in your home without proper ventilation of death may occur.

Cutting a hole in the roof: Ever wonder why we grab a power saw and cut a hole in the roof of a house? Well, when a house is on fire and it has not burned through the roof on its own, there is a tremendous amount of heat in the structure. When the firefighters go in to spray water onto the fire, it can turn to stream from the intense heat and that steam will roll back onto the firefighters and actually burn them. The gear we wear into a burning structure is designed to protect us from hot air, not hot steam. The steam can get into our gear. So one reason we cut a hole in the roof is to allow the heat to escape so we can enter to fight the fire more safely.

Not putting water on the fire right away: Some times, when we respond to a burning structure, there is still power applied to the structure. If we start spraying water, the electricity may travel up the water stream and shock the firefighters on the hose, the firefighters touching or still on the fire truck, and other firefighters on another hose line. So for obvious reasons, we must wait for the power company to shut off the power before we can perform our duties. If a jolt of electricity were to hit the fire engine, it would shut the truck down and it would probably take some time and repair to get it restarted so it wouldn't do well to knock out the firefighters, the fire truck, and still lose the house.

Why you see helicopters at vehicle accidents and not at house fires: One resource we can use at any given time is the "LifeFlight" helicopter. They are usually used only when a person's injuries are so critical that a nearby hospital may not be able to handle the patient. If the patient needs to be transported to a hospital further away, say Raleigh, NC, the ambulance ride would be an hour long. By helicopter, the patient could be transported in 15 minutes or so. If we can get the patient to the hospital within one hour after getting injured, we stand a greater chance of saving or helping that person. Car accidents happen so quickly that usually a person has very little time to react and often times get injured. If someone's house catches fire, they usually get out of the house quickly and are seldom injured. If, however, someone can't get out of the house, and they get badly burned, we will call in a helo to transport them to a burn center.

Blocking traffic: The reason we park our fire trucks right in the middle of the roadway or lane of traffic is to protect the emergency responders from vehicle traffic while working at the accident scene. Unfortunately, many emergency responders are killed or hurt each year due to inattentive drivers "rubber-necking" as they pass a motor vehicle accident. The driver never sees the person in the road directing traffic because he or she was more interested in seeing what the accident was about or if someone got injured that they may know. For this reason, it is very important for you, the vehicle driver, to watch out for pedestrians at an accident scene, slow your vehicle down, roll down your window (if weather permits) so you can listen better, and definitely turn down your stereo. Additionally, if a firefighter or EMS person yells out to a driver to slow down and there is a Highway patrolman or Sheriff at the scene, they have been known to chase after the driver of that vehicle to issue a citation for "failing to slow their vehicle at the scene of an emergency."

Why we use hydraulic tools to cut open a vehicle: This one is a no-brainer....Hydraulics can put thousands of pounds of mechanical force at the command of the firefighter wielding the tool. If a vehicle suffers a major collision and we are unable to gain entry to the vehicle to remove an injured or trapped person, often times, we need to use extreme force to bend, tear, cut, or otherwise remove the vehicle from around that person. The jaws of life gives us that ability. There are various types of hydraulic tools available. We have rams, spreaders, and cutters, the most common used and needed. Our tools run off of a portable hydraulic pump powered by a gasoline engine. We also have hand and electric tools to assist when hydraulic tools are just too much for the task at hand.

Why we burn the woods every so often: As the seasons change and the leaves fall from the trees, they begin to accumulate on the ground at the base of the trees. After several years of this happening, there would be a great amount of dried and dead leaves there. If a fire gets started, it would race through these leaves at an incredible speed and the fire would rapidly get out of control. For this reason, the woods are burned off so that the small amounts of leaves don't become huge amounts of leaves. Also, the ash from the leaves become fertilizer for the ground and new grass will grow there. Generally, this grass is harder to burn, makes the woods look greener, and is good for the wildlife that lives in the woods.

Back Burning: If a woods fire or grassfire is approaching a house or subdivision, we have a few options at our disposal. One is to call NC Forestry so they can bring out their "tractor-plow" (bulldozer) and plow a fire line around the fire (more on that in another paragraph) or we can do what is call back burning. Generally, we only back burn with Forestry at the scene. When we back burn, we start a small fire in a defendable area closer to the structure and in shorter grass. This will burn away any fuels (grass or brush) near the buildings so when the larger woods fire approaches, there is no fuel left to consume and the fire will either burn itself out or move around the structures where we have not burned off yet. Often, what happens is the larger woods fire will actually pull the smaller back burn fire toward it, thereby putting itself out. This is where the term, "fighting fire with fire" comes into play.

Cutting a fire break: The tractor-plow mentioned above is operated by NC Forestry. The plow is used to cut a swath out of the ground and turn up fresh soil as a means to stop the spread of fire. Generally, soil won't burn so the plow will make a few trench paths in the ground to prevent a ground fire from spreading. If the fire gets up into the tree tops, the plow can push over trees to prevent the fire from spreading along the tree tops. Using the plow is very effective but unfortunately there is no finesse to using it. It is very good at tearing up the ground. Sometimes though, we have to overlook that and get the plow out there plowing to save some homes.

Why we go to local businesses to perform surveys: We call these surveys "pre-incident surveys" which we use to create what we call a "pre-incident plan." What we do is take a whole bunch of notes on the location of entrances, exits, fire-sprinkler connections, gas pipelines, power meters or boxes, and items in the building which may present a hazard. If a building like a movie rental store catches fire, the hazards would be different from those of a paint store, a book store, or even a restaurant. If we understand what these hazards are and respond to such a building, we will already know if we need to request more resources like more fire trucks, a HAZMAT team, or something along those lines. If we didn't perform these surveys, we could show up and send in a team of firefighters just to find out that the room they went into was filled with highly flammable liquids. We do these surveys so we don't get a surprise once we show up on scene to do our jobs.

Shutting off our lights and siren while running down the highway: You may see a fire truck driving along on the road running with its red lights and siren on, and then suddenly, the lights and siren are off. There are two main reasons why this may happen:

1. Our department was cancelled by another department that we were called to assist. Some times, we will be enroute to a neighboring district and they will call us by radio and tell us they do not need our help. So we shut off our lights and siren and look for a place to turn around and head back to our station. We may also do this if one of our firefighters already on scene tells us we are not needed or we don't need to run with lights and sirens.

2. Another instance is where we may cause some sort of panic or unsafe act with the public by running with lights and sirens. An example of this might be very bad weather, icy roads, or very heavy traffic on the roadway. We don't want to cause an accident by having another driver try to pull over for us and strike another vehicle in the process.

Little blue reflectors and hydrant colors: Ever wonder what those little blue reflectors are for in the road? Those little guys allow us to quickly spot the location of a fire hydrant at night. Where ever you see one of those reflectors, there should be a fire hydrant nearby. Some times, the snow plow will break them loose from the asphalt and we have to replace them but that is what they are there for. The firefighters at this department maintain them as well as the paint on the hydrants themselves. The color of the hydrant signifies the water flow of that particular hydrant. If we are attacking a really bad grass fire or house fire, we want our truck to be connected to the highest "flow" hydrant in the area. Also, we can't hook more than one truck to a low "flow" hydrant so that helps us decide where to connect another truck if needs be.